Telephones were cosmopolitan at the time, but not the party line conversations. Simon Michelet, the contentious federal agent, ordered reservation telephone lines to the government schools in Mahnomen, Beaulieu, and Porterville. The Napa Valley Wine advertisement explained, “Ladies can visit our establishment as unconcernedly as any dry goods store.”
Early the next morning we visited the three great dry goods stores on nearby Nicollet Avenue. Aloysius was inspired by the fortune and display of clothing in the stores, the great bay windows, and naturally he painted blue ravens in every display window of Dayton’s Dry Goods Company, Donaldson’s Glass Block, and down a few blocks at Powers Mercantile Company. We did not have enough money to buy anything, not even a paper napkin or a handkerchief, but we tried on shirts, coats, hats, and my brother painted me as a grandee in an enormous raincoat. The black sleeves became great blue wings that reached over the counters. The blonde clerk waved her hands and told us to leave, but when she saw the painting by my brother she was much more friendly. Aloysius painted the woman in a fedora and a brim of blue raven feathers over a train of light blue hair.
Aloysius paused at his reflection in every window.
The West Hotel was a great cruise liner afloat on a sea of shiny cobblestones, and surrounded by new theater buildings on Hennepin Avenue and Fifth Street. The Masonic Temple, a secret mountain of sandstone with decorative carved emblems, was only a block away. As the streetcars turned the corner in front of the hotel the trolley wheels sparked, a magical ritual at the foyer of the hotel.
The doorman was courteous, raised his hand and inquired about our business in the hotel. We were young, native, and not properly dressed for the entrance, but we were not skanky. Aloysius told the doorman that our uncle was the publisher of a newspaper, and then announced that we were there to paint blue ravens.
What is the name of the newspaper?
The Tomahawk.
Surely not a newspaper?
Yes, and with international news.
How the world changes.
We only want to see the hotel lobby.
The West Hotel lobby was luxurious and lighted by an atrium. The blue settees inspired my brother to paint blue ravens in every cushy seat, claws crossed as moneyed gentlemen, and disheveled wing feathers spread wide over the padded backs and arms, and across the marble floor of the huge lobby.
Rich ravens in shiny blue shoes.
Mark Twain, the great writer, had stayed at the West Hotel on July 23, 1895, in the same year that we were born on the White Earth Reservation. In a leather-bound book near the registration counter we discovered photographs and news stories about his visit to Saint Paul, Duluth, and Minneapolis.
The Minneapolis Journal reported that he suffered from a carbuncle on his leg, and had declined the invitations of admirers to visit the Minneapolis Public Library and Minnehaha Falls. “To the casual observer, as he lay there, running his fingers through his long, curly locks, now almost gray, he was anything but a humorist. On the contrary, he appeared to be a gentleman of great gravity, a statesman or a man of vast business interests. The dark blue eyes are as clear as crystal and the keenest glances shoot from them whenever he speaks.” Twain entertained an enthusiastic audience for ninety minutes that night at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Mark Twain left traces of his marvelous irony in the grand lobby of the West Hotel, and surely he would have told memorable stories about native totems and blue ravens from the White Earth Reservation.
Aloysius painted blue ravens on streetcars, a conductor with blue wings, blue ravens in dance moves on the cobblestones in a rainstorm, and dark blue eyes reflected in the bay windows of the West Hotel.
Hennepin Avenue was crowded with streetcars, motor cars, and horse-drawn wagons and carriages. The sounds were strange, unnatural, strained machines, and engines so loud we could barely hear the most familiar sound of the steady clop clop clop of horses on the cobblestones. We walked past great stone buildings, theaters, and restaurants, on our way to the Waverly Hotel.
The Orpheum Theatre was a majestic dominion of murmurs, theatrical recitations, ironic pronouncements, acrobatics, the lively tease of vaudeville, and the memorable voices of great lectures and plays. The theater that late afternoon was empty but not lonely. No one was at the ticket window so we entered the great auditorium without a ticket or a story. Everywhere we could hear the rich and evocative voices of actors in the balconies, the secrets, shouts and moans in the cluttered dressing rooms backstage.
Aloysius declared the theater his second home of visions and fantasy. He selected a seat in the front row of a side balcony and painted blue ravens in a stage play. The ravens of the theater turned a wing and raised their beaks to the audience. The only real play we had ever seen was the shortened government-school production of Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
The Waverly Hotel rented rooms by the week, but the manager was a friend of our uncle so we paid only five dollars for two nights. “Electric lights, bath, and telephone” were advertised in theater programs and newspapers. The hotel was located near the public library.
We walked past several restaurants on the way to the hotel and later read the advertisements, “Superb Cuisine at Café Brunswick,” and “Schiek’s Café Restaurant,” but the menus were too expensive and ritzy. So, we ate meat, potatoes, and corn at a nearby cafeteria for students. That first night we lingered in the tiny lobby of the hotel and found a program of events scheduled earlier in the summer at the Orpheum Theatre. Aloysius imagined the grand performances from our special seats in a side balcony. The program listed matinee admission to the gallery for fifteen cents. We were two months too late for the performances.
“Scotch Thistle,” a musical program directed by Theodore Martin, was advertised in the May 1909 program of the Orpheum Circuit of Theatres. Miss Charlotte Parry and Company presented “The Comstock Mystery” that same month.
“Master Laddie Cliff,” featured in another program, was “England’s famous little Comedian and Grotesque Dancer.” Another program announced the “First American Tour of Three Sisters Athletas, Direct from New York Hippodrome.” The sisters were “Extraordinary Lady Gymnasts.” “The Kinodrome New and Interesting Motion Pictures” reported that the pictures were about a “Ring Leader” and a “Jealous Hubby.”
Naturally, we were excited to read the programs and would have attended every matinee performance. We were more interested in the Lady Gymnasts than the Kinodrome. The movies we saw on the reservation were trivial and flimsy. The stories in the movies were monotonous, more about agents than the ice women or the dance of the plovers.
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CARNEGIE TOTEMS
— — — — — — — 1909 — — — — — — —
The Minneapolis Public Library was only ten years old that summer of our migration, a massive stone building with magnificent curved bay windows. The turrets on two corners resembled a baronial river castle, but the books inside were never the reserved property of the nobility.
Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy industrialist and passionate philanthropist, donated more than sixty million dollars to build public libraries, and more to establish schools and universities around the country. A slight portion of his great treasure acquired from the steel industry and other investments was used to construct the Minneapolis Public Library.
Carnegie
